The field of communications has become increasingly important in today's society. In particular, the ability to quickly and effectively interact with an individual (through any suitable communications media) presents a significant obstacle for component manufacturers, system designers, and network operators. This obstacle is made even more difficult due to the plethora of diverse communication technologies (e.g. Instant Messaging, cellular communications, simple voice sessions, etc.) that exist in the current marketplace. These different communications technologies may use different procedures or protocols in establishing communication sessions and implementing various features associated with the communication technology. This further complicates attempts to interconnect devices utilizing different communications technologies.
As new communications technologies become available to the consumer, new protocols need to be developed in order to optimize this emerging technology. One problem often encountered is implementing new features in a communications platform that uses an older, standardized, protocol such as session initiation protocol (SIP). More specifically, a communications platform used in implementing a Shared Line protocol or paradigm has features that may not directly correspond with SIP.